Silver bought and sold: A.B. Griswold & Co. and the legacy of Northeastern silver in New Orleans
Date
2012
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
This thesis argues that A.B. Griswold & Co. successfully navigated the
economic and political difficulties of postbellum New Orleans and provided luxury
goods to its citizens and regional consumers. By examining surviving objects and
accounts and focusing on the firm itself, this thesis will demonstrate that there were
successful retailers, and by extension markets, in the South. Further, it will examine
the relationship between New Orleans retailers and Northern manufacturers in the
years following the Civil War, rooted in a longer history beginning before the war.
Although retailers had to adapt to the economic and political changes that took place
during secession, occupation, and Reconstruction, many of the business practices
established before the war, continued after 1865. A.B. Griswold & Co. adapted and
continued the business networks of its preceding partnerships: James N. Hyde & Co.;
Hyde & Goodrich; and Thomas, Griswold & Co. The firm is less defined by
challenging historical and economic events than by its own history, family leadership,
retail practices, and connections in the Northeast. This thesis demonstrates that the
firm of A.B. Griswold & Co. practiced more continuity than change in the second half
of the nineteenth century, following its predecessors and upholding a legacy of
retailing Northeastern silver in New Orleans.
Description
Keywords
A.B. Griswold & Company, Silver Gorham Manufacturing Company, ,